Trainer Tip: Without knowing our feelings, its harder to live fully present, take care of ourselves, and make sound decisions. If its difficult for you to know what you feel and to express your feelings, consider reviewing a list of feelings, practice expanding your feelings vocabulary, and naming your feelings.

Trainer Tip: Notice when you create stories about why something occurred. Commit to only observing facts. Then make decisions that are likely to give you relief and joy. For instance, if someone is late you may think that she’s inconsiderate or values another thing more than you. Instead, observe what you know—that she's later than agreed. From there, you could call her to find out what’s going on.

Trainer Tip: Even when it's tempting to coerce or match might with might, we can strive to meet our needs without negatively affecting others. Instead of convincing anyone to do it our way or to value the same things we value, we can focus on what we value: compassion among people and valuing everyone’s needs. By doing this we are actually more likely to meet our own needs and we are better able to live peacefully.

Even in the face of societal upheavals we can look for what's in our power to change. For example, we can participate in systemic change, and heal whatever we need to heal that which keeps us from living our values more readily. We can take the time to be present to those in pain, and to show up fully in our lives even when we feel stress. We can take strides to make a difference towards creating the world we want to live in.

Control may help us feel safe in an unpredictable, unsafe, wild world. Wanting control may be a response to shielding ourselves from feeling fear and being aware of our vulnerability. The more we insulate from fear, discomfort, and vulnerability, the more we are cut off from aliveness; we can become more anxious, and depressed. The more we control the more we are disconnected from empathy and care. With aliveness come joy, peace, love, awe.

We can shift from being absorbed and identified with our inner chatter and feelings to being the space of awareness of these things. Observe your breath. Then observe your mind generating thoughts. Next, feel sensations of your body, particularly the difficult ones. Now, connect with the underlying energy of needs. Ask your unconscious mind for universal needs words related to what you now notice, think and feel.

There are many polarizing issues we can resist and fight over. The word "resistance" can mean fighting against what we don’t agree with in counterproductive ways. It can also be the illusion and futility of mentally fighting against reality of 'what is'. But acceptance, non-resistance, of what is doesn’t mean powerless resignation. Another way to resist is to accept and love whole-heartedly, with empathy and care for the people doing the things we are resisting.

Grief is often confused with anguish. Anguish is a painful feeling that comes along with deep resistance to an experience or truth. Grief that leads to healing is an expansive state. It is a willingness to be with an experience and truth. If you're not resisting grief, then it's a neutral-to-pleasant experience. Pleasant sensations can include a sense of space and relief as something is integrated and tense holding releases.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to talking about power and privilege. Context, purpose, who is present and why all play a part in how you can orient to these conversations. In this video, Miki describes the deep considerations she makes when discussing this topic with others and in her leadership training.

How to get past the sting of a painful comment? Get empathy from self or another. Then connect with the commenter's feelings and needs. The more you can do this the less personally you may take it. Then work together on specific, do-able, authentic agreement about doing something differently next time, the kind that will enable you both to shift out of reactivity. Three things need to be in place for that to work.